State-space approach to evaluate spatial variability of field measured soil water status along a line transect in a volcanic-vesuvian soil

Comegna, Alessandro; Coppola, Antonio; Comegna, V.; Severino, Gerardo; Sommella, A.; Vitale, Cosimo Damiano

doi:10.5194/hessd-7-6553-2010

Cited by 9 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 20 publications

(15 reference statements)

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“…The total volume per unit ponded area was W ≃97 cm, and it took approximately 4 days to reach steady conditions. The water content ϑ was measured by time‐domain reflectometry (TDR) probes located at z = 30, 60, 90 cm (Comegna et al, , ). At the same depths (at 50 cm from the TDR‐probes), tensiometers were installed to record the pressure head Ψ (Figure ).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 85%

“…The present study aims at underlining that some remarkable properties of scale invariance of the effective water retention curve can be detected even within a stochastic approach. One advantage related to our approach is that the experimental burden, which is usually demanded to characterize the spatial variability of the hydraulic properties in a vadose zone (see, e.g., Comegna et al, ; Severino, Comegna, Coppola, Sommella, & Santini, ; Assouline, Ciriello, & Tartakovsky, ), is tremendously reduced.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A scale‐invariant property of the water retention curve in weakly heterogeneous vadose zones

Severino

Bartolo

2019

Hydrological Processes

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Abrupt changes of hydraulic properties in a vadose zone are modelled within a stochastic framework, which regards the saturated conductivity and parameters related to the distribution of soil pores as stationary, log‐normally distributed, random space functions. As a consequence, flow variables become random fields, and we aim at deriving an effective Richards equation. To obtain the latter, we adopt a perturbation expansion truncated at the first order (weakly heterogeneous media), which leads to the effective hydraulic conductivity and water retention curves. Overall, the effective properties are scale dependent. However, within the proposed framework, we demonstrate that the inflection point of the laboratory scale retention curve is not affected by the heterogeneity of the vadose zone. Finally, to illustrate the quantitative implications of our results, we consider a monitoring experiment at field scale, and we show how our approach leads to an effective water retention curve, which differs significantly from that which would be obtained without accounting for the above scale‐invariance property.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 85%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A scale‐invariant property of the water retention curve in weakly heterogeneous vadose zones

Severino

Bartolo

2019

Hydrological Processes

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“…Water content and matric potential data were measured during a drainage experiment (Gómez et al ) at 10 locations. In particular, a neutron probe was used to measure the water contents from the start of the drainage (Comegna et al ). Each value of the water content was obtained by averaging three readers in order to reduce the instrumental error as well as experimental uncertainties.…”

Section: Comparison With Experimental Datamentioning

confidence: 93%

A fractal analysis of the water retention curve

Bartolo

Fallico

Severino

2018

Hydrological Processes

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The dependence of the soil water content ϑ upon the matric potential ψ is studied within a fractal approach that regards the water retention curve as a sequence of well defined fractal regimes. Each of such regimes accounts for a given functional dependence ϑ≡ϑ(ψ), which in turn is characterized by a fractal dimension. The difference between the double fractal (observed into sandy soils) and multifractal (observed into clay soils) regime is explained by recalling that, for a sandy soil, the transition from saturated to dry conditions is driven by a steep reduction of ψ. To the contrary, for a clay (where the change from the highest water contents to the smallest ones is characterized by a large range of the matric potential), the multifractal behaviour is observed. These results are also confirmed by the analysis of experimental data. In particular, we show that the intermediate regime, generally accounting for the fractal multimodality, is due to the sandy nature of the soil at stake, practically immaterial. Finally, we demonstrate that our model can be also regarded as the straightforward generalization of that of Millán and González‐Posada ().

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“…Because of the analogy between space and time in case of one‐dimensional space, state‐space methods have been developed and are increasingly applied in agronomical and hydrological studies (Comegna et al, 2010; Morkoc et al, 1985; Nielsen and Wendroth, 2003; Poulsen et al, 2003; Timm et al, 2011; Vieira et al, 1983; Wendroth et al, 2006; Wu et al, 1997). For instance, Timm et al (2011) described the temporal variability of the soil water storage in a Brazilian coffee field.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Thus, autoregressive state‐space and state‐time models have been demonstrated to be a powerful tool in the data exploration of different soil physical and hydrological processes. Moreover, applications of state‐space models are promising for describing spatial and temporal variability of physical soil properties, and by defining the number and distance at which determinations are required, they enable a reduction of the number of samples (Comegna et al, 2010; Vieira et al, 1981; Wendroth et al, 2006).…”

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confidence: 99%

State‐Space Models Describe the Spatial Variability of Bromide Leaching Controlled by Land Use, Irrigation, and Pedologic Characteristics

Schwen

Yang

Wendroth

2013

Vadose Zone Journal

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Understanding leaching mechanisms of surface‐applied solutes and pesticides is of paramount interest. One problem inherent in leaching experiments at the field scale is the considerably large spatial variability of flow‐controlling soil properties. Analyzing treatment effects based on the mean and variance of randomly taken field observations can become obsolete if there is a huge inherent variance in the set of measurements. Therefore, in a new experimental design, presented earlier and with treatments being arranged in a scale‐dependent manner, Bromide (Br−) leaching was analyzed under two contrasting land uses (cropland vs. grassland) and affected by different irrigation characteristics. Given the cyclic arrangement of treatments and pedologic properties such as texture and bulk density, the Br− leaching process and changes in the soil water status during the experiment were described by autoregressive state‐space models. The results showed that changes in soil water status could be described by state equations comprising the irrigation amount and to a smaller extent the land use. The spatial process of Br− leaching was described by autoregressive state‐space models incorporating land use, irrigation amount, and changes in the soil water status during the experiment, as well as clay content and bulk density as means of the analyzed profiles. The results of this study demonstrated the efficiency of state‐space models for describing field solute transport based on experimental treatments and underlying pedological properties. This way of analysis improved our knowledge about the relative influence of these factors on field‐scale solute leaching.

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State-space approach to evaluate spatial variability of field measured soil water status along a line transect in a volcanic-vesuvian soil

Cited by 9 publications

References 20 publications

A scale‐invariant property of the water retention curve in weakly heterogeneous vadose zones

A scale‐invariant property of the water retention curve in weakly heterogeneous vadose zones

A fractal analysis of the water retention curve

State‐Space Models Describe the Spatial Variability of Bromide Leaching Controlled by Land Use, Irrigation, and Pedologic Characteristics

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